November 13, 2011

Sunday Morning

So how did you love the debate? If you thought the greatest crisis facing America was the tendency of Republican Presidential candidates to take forty seconds to deliver a thirty second answer, then you loved CBS moderator Scott Pelley. Of course, he looked pretty stupid when he cut Mitt Romney off after thirty seconds and Mitt had to explain he was on the sixty second clock. Ooops! And his lecture to Newt about the illegality of Obama's lethal drone strike on Awlaki was absurd. Per CBS News, the Justice Department is on one side and the ACLU on the other; the question is at best unresolved.

Among the candidates, I thought the humbler, self-deprecating Rick Perry was effective. He had some good quips about his Dept of Energy memory lapse, but otherwise did seem lost up there. Gingrich and Romney stood out, as usual; Cain seemed to be BSing, but it probably didn't cost him support.

Needless to say, Penn State is all over the Sunday chat shows with state officials obviously not being able to say anything about an ongoing investigation. In a way this is the MFM at its worst, devoting significant time to an issue like this, rather than something more important to the nation as a whole which can be adequately commented on, to show that THEY CARE FOR THE CHILLLLLLLDREN. Franco Harris comes off as a dumb jock who is too stupid to understand the responsibilties that the BoT has to the university. If he had any friends who cared about him they'd tell him to stop making himself available for comment on this.

Welol he doesn't 'just play one on TV' but he might have 'stayed at a Holiday Inn, Express,' Captain. On another note, Lawrence Spivak is screaming in the ether, at what Gregory AU '90, has done with the place.

In retrospect, the results of last night's Oregon/Stanford game shouldn't be surprising when you consider the miraculous job that Harbaugh has done with the previously hapless 49ers. You can't lose a coach like that and expect to move forward seamlessly.

Octopi populations are in jeopardy as Juan tries to fit one for every forehead with his defense of OWS.

narc I'm glad that Michele came off pretty well, at least in your eyes. Although she's her own worst enemy with her need for attention, excessive even by the standards of politicians, I don't think she's a bad person and could be a good voice for conservatism if she'd dial it back.

She went back to her strong suit, which was challenging Obamacare, and defending waterboarding, Gregory countered with the dissent of 'my friends' and the top men in the army staff, but that isn't really dispositive, of course, releasing the interrogation memos, really made the point moot.

Later at a press conference, Google CEO Steve Schmidt was asked about the remarks. Schmidt said it is hard to answer without knowing what the standard of laziness is. He did say thought that America could be more aggressive. "I think the government and the nation should always be focusing more on the fastest-growing parts of the world. So I'm not sure that's a new discovery," Schmidt.

However he noted he probably wouldn't have used the word lazy.

Wow, is this brainiac related to the dimwit who masterminded My Friend's 2008 campaign?

So America is "lazy," "soft," has lost its "competitive edge" and "need[s] to get back on track." According to Obama, "we've lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam and unleashed all the potential in this country."

How about a more accurate appraisal:
Mr. Obama, your administration's ambition has focused on reining in America's imagination and burdening American ambition with unnecessary rules and regulations designed to cripple American potential to do anything that is at odds with your administration's ideology and goals.

"I'm in favor of a Truman Committee, similar to his investigation of the war effort."

SBW,

I'm not sure that would work. I'm thinking more about the wholesale thefts by the solar frauds than about the wholesale theft committed by the Education Department in making 'student loans' as a means of redistribution but the means used for the theft may be just as legal as Jon Corzine having all the cash vacuumed out of MF Global clients accounts in order to satisfy the claims of what purport to be senior debtors.

President Obama's theft in favor of George Kaiser and many others may have been completely legal. It was clearly misfeasance and certainly malfeasance, it involves a level of corruption that certainly makes President Clinton green with envy but it is very difficult to find a specific act that was demonstrably illegal. It is not illegal for Nobel laureate Stephen Chu to do stupid things at BOzo's behest.

It's more likely that actual illegality can be found in the redistribution efforts of the Education Department but again, it will be misfeasance and malfeasance on the part of the Educrats with the actual fraud practiced by the recipients.

And, since a drama queen English major can manage, it clearly requires little effort.

A man after my own heart!

1. Bluster and threaten and take credit for something someone else did.
2. When called on your bullshit, denigrate both the accomplishment and the person who actually did it as weak and worthless.
3. Profit!!!!

Rick- Would it make any difference to your analysis to know students "disillusioned with false promises about big rewards for working hard and might become critics of the system" was part of a long term plan to undermine the capitalist ideology? Both K-12 and ihe?

I feel sorry for the students but they knew they were learning little and these degrees were not marketable. Special contempt in our story of corruption for both K-12 and ihe will end up going to the admin class. Parasites with too little knowledge or insight to recognize their behaviors put the host at risk. Economic pies are not self-sustaining even if no one told the credentialed educrats.

Never said or implied different. It occurs to me that Charlie may think I wrote the sockmock at 11:09 AM. Not so, I have never done the sock thing with anyone (yet). Although I did write the TJ at 11:18 AM.

What I like most about Newt (except his eye which was used by permission in Macbeth), is that he always slams the MSM for its incredible bias and false reporting. Scott Pelly is a bona fide sloganeer for the Obama Administration who clearly derives his understanding of the law from someone's vague notions. He does mirror, to a great degree, however, the false notions of "law" articulated, but not followed, by the Obama administration. This is, for me, quite enchanting. The Republicans need to do more of this when then are on the MSM. Otherwise, what's the point?

"I feel sorry for the students but they knew they were learning little and these degrees were not marketable. Special contempt in our story of corruption for both K-12 and ihe will end up going to the admin class."

RSE,

I don't understand the feeling of sympathy for the prey. They were not compelled to purchase serf's collars and their inability to recognize the administrators as the pack of jackals tasked with finding prey too dumb to recognize debt slavery becomes an argument that the weight of their serf's collar is the best education they can hope for.

I favor transfer of ultimate responsibility for the serf's debt to the colleges. That's the fastest way to clean out the administrator jackal pack.

"He's the proprietor of Protein Wisdom. He had a plague of Dana a few years ago and apparently also tracked him down."

Why are we still plagued by Capt. Carp? He should be gearing up for next semester's class on anarchy--the only class scheduled this year. The Occukids are chanting and drumming already for some extra credit.

I am not sympathetic to the prey who were after all borrowing for living expenses to boot. But this has also been a knowing trap.

AACU is front and center in the betrayal of trust dept as well as the accreditors. Basically you must radicalize to be a preferred member of the club in good standing. Without pointing out that nexus to the indebted students or their parents.

It's not capitalism that can't be trusted despite all that expensive rhetoric to the contrary. It's the institutions that have been systematically subverted.

Rick, the students have been fed this pap since elementary school and have been told to avoid work in the corporate arena. My granddaughters in WA proclaim global AGW is real and work for an NGO is the only way to go. The goal is everyone on the govt. payroll. As Shirley Sherrod told folks, the govt. cannot fire you. Isn't everyone today a winner?

Who said legal briefs need to be boring? Take a look at the initial paragraph of the Summary of Argument of the LUNed brief (an amicus curiae brief filed with SCOTUS on ObamaCare), and see how camels and hockey sticks are woven into an argument on the limits of the Spending Clause of the US Constitution.

You could do alot worse than listen to Gene Simmons. A self-made multi-multi-multi-millionaire with a world-wide marketing company.

This is from Wiki, but I've heard him in interviews voice the same sentiments:

Simmons was a supporter of the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration.[7] He supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, writing on his website: "I'm ashamed to be surrounded by people calling themselves liberal who are, in my opinion, spitting on the graves of brave American soldiers who gave their life to fight a war that wasn't theirs...in a country they've never been to... simply to liberate the people therein".[8] In a follow-up, Simmons explained his position and wrote about his love and support for the United States: "I wasn't born here. But I have a love for this country and its people that knows no bounds. I will forever be grateful to America for going into World War II, when it had nothing to gain, in a country that was far away... and rescued my mother from the Nazi German concentration camps. She is alive and I am alive because of America. And, if you have a problem with America, you have a problem with me".

This makes me laugh out loud. And, forever question anything Will writes. If he doesn’t understand this criticism, what could he understand?

On Friday, Politico’s Ben Smith reported that George Will’s wife, Mari Maseng, started working for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, with the goal of improving his debating skills.
Will chalked up any criticism as coming from the “less mature members of the Romney campaign” and noted a recent amicable encounter between his wife and Romney.

Smears on Rubio and Perry should be looked at in the same light. The attempt by Obama/Axelrod/Democrats/media is to marginalize conservatives/libertarians/GOP circles along racial lines.

Beatings of conservatives like Kenneth Gladney.

Star Parker speaks well on these points....and it is important to realize that attacking female and particularly minority
conservatives is standard operating procedure for the left.

Incongruent behavior obviously shouldn't be tolerated. But...as unpleasant as it may be..... smear campaigns driven by political operatives and push journolism need to be seen for what they really are and should be addressed aggressively.

We are going to see more smear campaigns this year. May as well get used to it. Not supporting Cain/Rubio for qualititative reasons is whole different matter than staying silent when political operatives and the media orchestrate a hit.

In the fullness of time.... w/ demographic shifts.... minority representation needs to be nurtured and protected w/in conservative circles.

Its nature curriculum was held out as an exemplary means for the Neo-Marxist to move beyond critical pedagogy to "Concern for the knowledge that primal peoples have regarding ecological relationships and technologies that our consistent with the view that we humans cannot survive independent of our habitat, that our freedom and progress is dependent on the larger biotic community of which we are a part".

I rarely log in to facebook any more,but did so today and saw your entry about her. I was going to send you an email checking on her and you, but your piece at the Tatler is a welcome note on her condition.

At 92 almost 93 my mom is starting to fail and concedes maybe she could use some household help for a few hours a week.
I hope she can stay independent until the end because she would hate any other option-even an apt in my own house.

It's emotional but I believe that habitual is more appropriate than instinctual. The indoctrination process is contra-instinctual in nature because it is contra-survival (except for the top level predators).

Is there any reason not to use child rapist Sandusky and the Penn State cover up as being illustrative of the entire educracy as a [w]hole? Clarice did a great job today. I'd like to see something similar in the hands of every school board and PTA in the country. Every parent in America should be visualizing little Johnny heading off to the shower room with Sandusky every morning when Johnny leaves for our Brave New World with the Lord of the Flies.

While reading your terrific Sunday column, I had a sudden flashback in re Vann Van Diepen, the "National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation." That was Valerie Plame's putative area of expertise: too, no?

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Alas, the three stooges were already reaping their unjust rewards under the Bush Administration. Fingar, in particular, stands out in my own recollections. I was astonished when John Negroponte, as newly created DNI, brought him in as one of his chief Deputy Directors (for Analysis!).

Funny that Armitage is the one being cited for calling out the bullshit, although I seem to recall some sort of falling out over at State. In hindsight, I think we may have been so shocked about Colin Powell's perfidious role in covering up his henchman's culpability during the Libby trial, that we never really sussed out the true measure of his own backstabbing game. I've always thought he travelled less than any other Secretary of State (and dropped so many international balls) because he was so deeply embroiled in DC back room politics that he was afraid to leave town.

Powell was at the top of the heap at State who believed that "that diplomacy, not confrontation and belligerence, would best address the threat from Iran’s nuclear program," and Fingar was one of the primary attack dogs who went after John Bolton. I vaguely, possibly erroneously, associate Fingar with the whole Mary McCarthy crowd over at the CIA too. I'm not sure whether I'm just lumping all the anti-Bush gunslingers together, or whether maybe they had some extra-government connection with one of those lefty think tanks?

In any case, this tidbit registered on my irony meter, after your Penn State intro. Guess who sits on its School of International Affairs Advisory Board? None other than Fingar & Plame!

Mind you, he came up with that ditty, after the '53 riots in East Germany, but that has much older roots, going back to the philosopher Kings, and Lenin's refinement of Marx, to institute the Vanguard, because the proles won't figure things out on their own,

Armitage, has many faults, ingratitude toward Libby, when the latter bailed him out of the 'two minute hate' the Perotistas and the Christics, had staged for him, but he readily
admitted that Valerie kept mucking up his INR
section, not that their goals weren't congruent.

With the big recall fun scheduled to start on Tuesday, the teachers union (WEAC) put out a report saying the collective bargaining law hurts children. This is a classic case of improperly using statistics to hide the salient variable. Most, but not all, school districts are union contact free and used this freedom to add teachers and programs. Some, notably Milwaukee Public Schools, extended teachers contracts while the Madison fun was ongoing. Anyone who wants to know if the Walker changes help or hurt would separate the two groups on this variable and compare results for significance. Neither the union nor the press have done so. -- they prefer to let the huge problems of MPS (half of teacher layoffs statewide) bury the actual results. So typical.

I finally have met my first JOMer: Jim Rhoads is staying less than 10 minutes from chez Hate. Spent a couple hours chatting with him at a local Paneras that was so enjoyable that time just disappeared.

Guess what? Thomas Fingar has written a book! He sounds like the product of a community organizing SWOT seminar:

Reducing Uncertainty describes what Intelligence Community analysts do, how they do it, and how they are affected by the political context that shapes, uses, and sometimes abuses their output. In particular, it looks at why IC analysts pay more attention to threats than to opportunities, and why they appear to focus more on warning about the possibility of "bad things" happening than on providing the input necessary for increasing the likelihood of positive outcomes.

The book is intended to increase public understanding of what IC analysts do, to elicit more relevant and constructive suggestions for improvement from outside the Intelligence Community, to stimulate innovation and collaboration among analysts at all grade levels in all agencies, and to provide a core resource for students of intelligence. The most valuable aspect of this book is the in-depth discussion of National Intelligence Estimates—what they are, what it means to say that they represent the "most authoritative judgments of the Intelligence Community," why and how they are important, and why they have such high political salience and symbolic importance.

The final chapter lays out, from an insider's perspective, the story of the flawed Iraq WMD NIE and its impact on the subsequent Iran nuclear NIE—paying particular attention to the heightened political scrutiny the latter received in Congress following the Iraq NIE debacle.

My outsider idea is charging the "Intelligence Community" with gathering intelligence, not "strategic planning." Ditto for the press, where we could use a lot more gumshoe reporting and a lot less "journalism."

Curiosity may finally get the better of me, but Reducing Uncertainty is the kind of book I buy secondhand, so that the author doesn't get any of the money. Now if Porter Goss wrote a tell-all, I'd buy it new. I've never understood why GWB cut him off at the knees, but I'm afraid that might be another Omelos story.

I knew that but was afraid it was a bit off track though the title is quite ironic given that his actions certainly increased, rather than decreased uncertainty, didn't they?
What is is about international affairs that it seems to attract at the top levels the biggest idiots?